I think it has to do with a question as to ?if? infinIte magnitudes can have RATIOS, like finite ones, but it is not quite time for me, to pipe up. I think we would all be "conscious" on EVC, if we were able to determine this.

quote:I have always been confused over the notion of "emergence" ( I heard it used in the classroom at Cornell but it did not seem to me to signify anything real) because I have never seen in that literature an exhaustive discussion of (when or if the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts) vs (the notions where the whole is NEVER greater than a sum (no matter which) of the parts). It is clear to mathmaticians of set theory that *transitively* the w, infinite (next after all finites), IS LARGER than the sum of all finite numbers but translating this into geometry seems to have been the reason it was not applied to thoughts about emergence.

Instead, I tend to think that algebra is here and emergence doesn't really exist, even though the cognitions you and others had associated with it in this thread did and does.

I don't understand why you would view emergence as used here as the cardinality of a set. It is more a physical concept than a formal abstract one (at least for the time being, as it doesn't seem fully understood yet).

It comes down to what you percieve to be a rational "sum" of parts. You seem to have a mathematical bent, so I'll use a set of points a1, a2..an on an (x, y) plane as an example. I'll pose two problems, one which seems to be the sum of its parts and one which seems to be greater, using that same set of points.

1) What is the maximum number of lines needed to exactly bound the convex cover of any given set of a1..an points? Clearly, n (the greatest convex polygon you can make with n points). This problem does seem to be a sum of its parts; add a point, you can make an n+1-sided polygon at most.

2) What is the shortest trip passing through all the a1..an points that returns to the starting point? (This is the famous travelling salesman problem, restricted to Euclidean space). You have n! possible routes (you can reduce to (n-1)! by symmetry I think, maybe even more, but you get my point); this problem is clearly NOT the sum of its parts, as adding a point multiplies the number of routes by n+1 or n, which is not additive by any stretch of the imagination.

Emergence as (I think) it was used here refers to collections of simple, interacting systems exhibiting behaviours more complex than the simple intuitive 'addition' of their complexity would lead you to expect, more or less analogous to the TSP; it is not intuitively obvious (at least to me it wasn't) that a small increase in the number of points leads to such tremendous increases in the hardness of the problem.

Behaviours of insect colonies, for example ants, are seen as emergent; each individual ant has a small and very simple set of behaviours (can be modeled as a finite state machine). Worker ants have a set of no more tan 40 to 80 distinct behaviours, according to E. O. Wilson (IIRC). You wouldn't expect that to 'add up' to the complex foraging, architectural and child-rearing behaviour of a colony, which seems directed by a central intelligence.

The fact that these simple behaviours give rise to behaviour which seems intelligent and altogether of a different quality than the reflex behaviour of components (workers), like the architecture of Termite vent chimneys, is (or was) counterintuitive. Somewhat like the addition of a single point making the TSP much harder.

The upshot of all this is that purely reductionist methods don't apply to these; looking at point subsets of the TSP doesn't seem to help you much in the solution for the whole set of points, and looking at individual ants doesn't explain the behaviour of a colony. This clashed with the reductionist worldview (IMO), and so "emergent" was probably invented to describe phenomena they intuitively never expected to be there, and which looked weird because they weren't the neat linear sum of effects which is so nice and easy to solve for.

A system that behaves like the sum of its parts is statistical mechanics; you can average out velocity of particles, average out particle position, and these numbers are meaningful in understanding the whole system. Systems exhibiting emergent behaviour don't do this, they are much more immune to pure statistical analysis; a small change, insignificant statistically, CAN lead to large changes in the whole system.

In essence, I think the fact that collections of ants didn't behave like collections of molecules in statistical mechanics (with obvious parameters that can be easily described and used to predict system behaviour with comparatively simple math), jarred people. Unsurprising, when you see all those early hubristic "probabilities that life originated on earth" calculations, which were basically nonsense legitimized because it was told in the math language. Instead of recognizing the hardness of assigning such a probability, let's cloak our ignorance in math and say life is extremely improbable. But I'm starting to digress.

quote:I don't understand why you would view emergence as used here as the cardinality of a set. It is more a physical concept than a formal abstract one (at least for the time being, as it doesn't seem fully understood yet).

>There may be a commutative sum whichthat ISNOT distributive PER >REVOLUTION(of/on/if Earth) but transient rotationally dividing >chemical classes (as if I already knew that calculation of any force >that would "flip" a Galton PolyGON.

quote:It comes down to what you percieve to be a rational "sum" of parts. You seem to have a mathematical bent, so I'll use a set of points a1, a2..an on an (x, y) plane as an example. I'll pose two problems, one which seems to be the sum of its parts and one which seems to be greater, using that same set of points.I don't understand why you would view emergence as used here as the cardinality of a set. It is more a physical concept than a formal abstract one (at least for the time being, as it doesn't seem fully understood yet).

>maybe ONLY because I read F.Jacob using the term "inaccessible >cardinal" AND knowing that this is a technical term in set theory?

quote:It comes down to what you percieve to be a rational "sum" of parts. You seem to have a mathematical bent, so I'll use a set of points a1, a2..an on an (x, y) plane as an example. I'll pose two problems, one which seems to be the sum of its parts and one which seems to be greater, using that same set of points.

>I would suspect if this plane represented some subset of RNA codes >within Lerner's notion of "fluid genetic composition" PER TWO >DESCRIPTIONS OF PHENOTYPES (ie two different taxonomic >OBJECTIVITIES) then this complex could be discussed unless the >different views of you and me are ONLY about the NERVOUS SYSTEM in >which case the topology would be required and not just a plane >geometrically.

quote:1) What is the maximum number of lines needed to exactly bound the convex cover of any given set of a1..an points? Clearly, n (the greatest convex polygon you can make with n points). This problem does seem to be a sum of its parts; add a point, you can make an n+1-sided polygon at most.

>I admit that a plainmeter might give a visual as to the outlier or >projection but if the repulsions =/= attractions provided one is >able to discuss action at a distance in terms of recombination data >it is unclear to me if this example (I would need to "turn on" my >mathematical bent (which I will do for any follow up) will do the >work of turining any Galtonian curve via some sum of Gaussian errors >into the what symmetrically might be skewed in the distribution FROM >DNA TO PROTEINS and NOT the other way around macrothermodynamically >per priciple of substance stability. THIS IS NEEDED in theoretically >biology UNLIKE apriori probabilites in Physics becuase we only HAVE >ONE physical description of the world but TWO formed ones of the >shapes that classificatory biology slots/categorizes/pigeonholes etc >etc etc.

quote:2) What is the shortest trip passing through all the a1..an points that returns to the starting point? (This is the famous travelling salesman problem, restricted to Euclidean space). You have n! possible routes (you can reduce to (n-1)! by symmetry I think, maybe even more, but you get my point); this problem is clearly NOT the sum of its parts, as adding a point multiplies the number of routes by n+1 or n, which is not additive by any stretch of the imagination.

quote:Emergence as (I think) it was used here refers to collections of simple, interacting systems exhibiting behaviours more complex than the simple intuitive 'addition' of their complexity would lead you to expect, more or less analogous to the TSP; it is not intuitively obvious (at least to me it wasn't) that a small increase in the number of points leads to such tremendous increases in the hardness of the problem.

quote:Behaviours of insect colonies, for example ants, are seen as emergent;

>I dont think that "farming lichens" is emergent at all.

quote:each individual ant has a small and very simple set of behaviours (can be modeled as a finite state machine). Worker ants have a set of no more tan 40 to 80 distinct behaviours, according to E. O. Wilson (IIRC). You wouldn't expect that to 'add up' to the complex foraging, architectural and child-rearing behaviour of a colony, which seems directed by a central intelligence.

>density dependence is a RESULT population thinking but the ability >to write the results will depend on the sample to some extent. It >may even depend on the electrons in the ant itself.

quote:The fact that these simple behaviours give rise to behaviour which seems intelligent and altogether of a different quality than the reflex behaviour of components (workers), like the architecture of Termite vent chimneys, is (or was) counterintuitive.

>YEs but now I would need to discuss the Galvanni-Volta, Faraday, >Gladyshev's thermostat and many things no one seems to have but in >one ear and out the ear of the other- ha!

quote: Somewhat like the addition of a single point making the TSP much harder.

The upshot of all this is that purely reductionist methods don't apply to these; looking at point subsets of the TSP doesn't seem to help you much in the solution for the whole set of points, and looking at individual ants doesn't explain the behaviour of a colony. This clashed with the reductionist worldview (IMO), and so "emergent" was probably invented to describe phenomena they intuitively never expected to be there, and which looked weird because they weren't the neat linear sum of effects which is so nice and easy to solve for.

>Thats my first go on holism versus organaciism. You'll have to give me a break, excuse the mess and make a feel @the >chance to think about it some-more.

quote:A system that behaves like the sum of its parts is statistical mechanics; you can average out

>back to repulsions vs attractions and supramolecularity!!

see also intereadthreadalia by me

If I can show that stasis IS NOT data on the reference of Mathcette about the static atomism of a materialistic-mechanism dialectic then absolutely. That would be big news. But even if I can not show this there is still some "wiggle" room in my mind to go in a particular direction that I still remand to Matchette's notion of changing divergences from a rock to a plant to an animal to a human. THIS LAST, is not the "chain of being" affilated to Kant but just what non-Buffonian mould it was is hard for me to project the plane that can rotated in. THIS PARTICULAR INSigHT WHICH i wrote as thesis to will provine (who said that the text was "random" thus proving my point) under college scholar COntract at cU attempt to futher the lexicology BUT NOT THE grammer of it. I was suitably impressed with Derrida's reading of Husserl to hold off on NOT refering to the grammer as well. I did not, nonetheless.To answer your question and not my interest or motivation rather than is then if the claims of Gould to "stasis" is an artifact of the late appearence of the philosophy of biology as a discipline. (???) You see, the proper response is quite expansive still. A sound bite like "DNA is a torision lessing system" will not even remotely work here even if we were using any and all current technology to communicate with. I can also discuss Gould's attempt to bring the Python to the Plane of an Insect body. It is still a matter of the tail and not the head.

I have no idea what you're on about; whatever it is, it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

Why do you bring inaccessible cardinals into the discussion when emergence in this context feels quite at home in finite sets, ie cellular automata? You don't even need the notion of countable infinity (at least not explicitly), and if you want to introduce it, you haven't shown me why you're using it. The fact that it's a technical term in set theory is immaterial.

Why do you respond with statements about RNA to what was clearly an abstract example? Why do you assume I know who Lerner is? What does he or RNA or phenotypes have to do with what I wrote? NOTHING AT ALL. It is an abstract example, to illustrate a point about 'summing' complexity.

quote:>There may be a commutative sum whichthat ISNOT distributive PER >REVOLUTION(of/on/if Earth) but transient rotationally dividing >chemical classes (as if I already knew that calculation of any force >that would "flip" a Galton PolyGON.

???

quote:>density dependence is a RESULT population thinking but the ability >to write the results will depend on the sample to some extent. It >may even depend on the electrons in the ant itself.

???

quote:>YEs but now I would need to discuss the Galvanni-Volta, Faraday, >Gladyshev's thermostat and many things no one seems to have but in >one ear and out the ear of the other- ha!

???

quote: >Thats my first go on holism versus organaciism. You'll have to give me a break, excuse the mess and make a feel @the >chance to think about it some-more.

???

I can't get over the feeling you're having me on. Few of your responses are even tangentially related to what I wrote. And all those citations of names, it looks like a satire of typical extra strong Academia-grade proof by intimidation. I don't get it.

I have maintained here on EVC, but perhaps you will be the first to displace this sustained attention, that while you might have ANY stat molecular distribution your good big statistical mechanical heart desires but this will not guarenttee in biology that you have a an electron DISTRIBUTION.

If you comment on the following substantitively you can have any letter I wrote as I do not require the last word.

Campbell, Foundations of Science, Chance and Probability, The Theory of Chance footnote page 202 by Dover publishing... "There will, of course, be a very great change if we are considering the positions of the individual molecules, regarded as seperately identifiable. If we suppose that the molecules are not identifiable, so that all distributions are the same in which the same number of molecules is present in the same volume, then there is no change in the distribution with time. But this consideration is not relevant to our present purpose. When we say that the distribution of the molecules is dictated by chance we are thinking of the molecules as identifiable. The possiblilty of regarding certain large collections as identical although the elemetns of which they are composed are different gives rise to the study of statistics. There is a close connection between statistics and probability, but the use of statistics may be quite independent of the conceptions of chance which we are examining now."

Now, I AM examining the unisexual salamanders. Simply try to think that the tiger salamander could not climb up on a glacier while those salamanders that did that in the past ended up reproducing ABOVE rocks their ancestors could only look up to.

A round ringing rock my friend. If you are below it I hope you evolve.

Because cellular automata are about fungi not lichens which you or I could engineer in some future ecosystem and besides I DID THINK of something substative in Wolfram's classifications of automata but as his own company distanced himself from it I will only now write about that under the issue of Why Weyl never got biology just left. Wolfram's "rules" and thus any cellular automata could go either way but the salamanders will always be the last play in the Bills football game (see the geographic hatching change from n-s to e-w) in the last twenty years of herpetology if you are still missing some of it) no matter how many time Gibbs had the last word.

You thought you said,

quote:You don't even need the notion of countable infinity (at least not explicitly), and if you want to introduce it, you haven't shown me why you're using it. The fact that it's a technical term in set theory is immaterial.

Why do you respond with statements about RNA to what was clearly an abstract example? Why do you assume I know who Lerner is? What does he or RNA or phenotypes have to do with what I wrote? NOTHING AT ALL. It is an abstract example, to illustrate a point about 'summing' complexity.

But it IS to my own credit, sorry about padding my wallet, that I AM ABLE (within the descriptive plethora of biological discourse TO NOT EXPLICTLY USE the countably infinite (though in private notes I have used it many a time and you can easily find posts on this web site where I indeed have or had tried to at least)(I do KNOW what you are asking but there IS NO ONE here (except you perhaps) who has had the ability to discuss fundamental series with me to Plank IN BIOLOGY so I have found this lexic rather than grammetical way of saying the same cognition without the idea always in iteself (as if %that% were possible- as you know it is not)). At the time I WAS USING METAPHYSICS not phenomenological thermodynamics to do my criticism with, and so where I introduced some$ idea of commutativity, associativity, distributivity it did matter because the responders here were not simply addressing the metaphysics.

The post before Georgi Gladyshev introduced me, again, as I had in a prior time tried to get posters here interested in macro thermo by itself, I HAD indeed opened up this issue of RNA, and I can find it in with the search enginge if it matters which way the dripping water flows but I guess you simply have a materialistic bent that is the majority here but not one I arouse nor try to awake.But what I heard was that you wanted to know about how I place the name "M. Lerner" in all of it. I am sorry. I did rush through it but because I did not have the reference in front of me I made that a short-cut.

Lerner was a geneticist of polutry. I will describe the relevance AGAIN if you wish but if all you are interested in is the USE of the countably infinite in cellular automata or the policy TO NOT USE IT then you will have to enagage me on a metaphysical level I have tried to not use here as this did not generate the response I had hoped for.

My positive thought in your direction has to do with the realtion of the classes of cellualar automata INTO the QUADROUPLE desciptors of biologists but this is not something I can always keep clear in my brain so I dont try to write it.

Gladyshev used "descriptions" of macrokinetics and phenomelogical recursions of macrothermodynamics for the same subspecific differentiation that a nesting automata might nich construct genetically IF there were also TWO phenotypes misdescibed as one but if they were still unified in any grammetical way the type four automata might STILL find the same PROGRAM but this will not occurr in any life case so unless the two pheynotypes ARE properly doubly described the symmetra on one dimmension (through a code THAT DOES BEAR in RNA) could still find the outlier in the distribution even if I was wrong nondescriptively about the electron placements.

If people hear here learned the simpler things we could perhaps find that Hume's idea of idea was already here but then we might have moved off topic.

my last substantive update was

quote:I had left this following out my last post on how I think and is crucial for full integration of my ideas, Gould's and GP'sBioinformatics can, absolutely, be as a means to asses various denials of Euclid's postulate V.

1)Use two forms of 1-D symmetry distributed by so-called Central Dogma or like kind to generate aposteriori "two right angles" Rotations compared to Quaternions representing thermal contacts in closed electron currents may necessary to construct them.2)Provide a definition of alleomoph series in terms of self-similar 1-D symmetry for any DUAL aspect of space(point, line,plane) where any straight line receives a harmonic congugate on one side only by reason apriori of logical failure of postulate V in the data as statistics reveals or could reveal.3)Construct Hamiltonians to record the 2 DIMensional dissemination of the Formal 1-D symmetries by setting per thermal contact any two "right angles" equal and calculate the concurrent isolation by distance. Make the two interior angles morphometrically spaced between the unique 3-D presentation of ionic chemistry titration in entropic equilibrium and use incidence to asses statistical relative frequencies4)Show what cells meet these conditions catastrophically with ordertypes coordinating the uniqueness to quantitative genetics5)Get water balance topographical leveling (desert vs mountain) adptaions per migrations6)Grow local food and disseminate in the Solar System

Diagram to show how delta T derived from difference of time for electron motion in thermal CIRCUT and Fourier heat flow (postulating THIS is cause of Huxley's grade-clade difference not Crick's force between base pair (or chemical "acridine")) hence there is logical room GP truth of nonbranching aposteriori results AND baraminological access to nonhomogenous distributions fractally similar in time and space IF ONLY THIS% but that is a restriction I have so far not tried to enter on c/e discussions at all. This indeed may update Gladyshev's depreication (and rightly so I must remark) of any entangling of Shannon's entropy H and Gibbs' entropy S etc(both classical and statistical) but to work it out in full it requies not only my own outline but specific actual hierarhic idenfications of changes life bring to chemicla equilibiria from just the part contributed by Faraday THEMAL CONTACT in a DNA-Protein-RnA circle of electron transport no matter the level of aggregation informationally for some rigours use of S.sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssIn Georgi's book (f) he kindly supplied me an English translation of the abstract and forward where on can read, "It becomes apparent that new horizons of development and application of thermodynamic theory will be encountered in the future. It seems likely that more precise and complete models of the function of living systems will appear. However, the author is convinced that they will rely upon the fundamentals of natural science"&"Above all. much of the work reflects the fact that the author was successful in "broadening" the apparatus of classical thermodynamics and applying it to open hierarchical evolutionary biological systems. Apart from this, the interpretation of a series of fats in the author's previous publications has been re-thought and refined in accordance with the latest data found in scientific literature. In all cases, these refinements have reinforced the conviction of the author in the veracity of the fundamental postulates of the theory. However, biology still retains numerous unresolved problems. This is connected to the hugely complicated questions facing theories of phylogenesis and ontogenesis."

quote: I have maintained here on EVC, but perhaps you will be the first to displace this sustained attention, that while you might have ANY stat molecular distribution your good big statistical mechanical heart desires but this will not guarenttee in biology that you have a an electron DISTRIBUTION.

Methinks you are misunderstanding my point, which was precisely about NOT always getting what our big statistical mechanical hearts desire (simplicity) in biology. I was using stat. mech. (actually thinking about the kinetic theory of gases) as an example of a system which behaves 'additively', as opposed to systems exhibiting "emergent" phenomena. Otherwise, don't know what you are talking about, and certainly made no claims about charge distributions in organisms. I'm not knowledgeable enough to discuss them. Maybe you could clarify?

quote:Campbell, Foundations of Science, Chance and Probability, The Theory of Chance footnote page 202 by Dover publishing... "There will, of course, be a very great change if we are considering the positions of the individual molecules, regarded as seperately identifiable. If we suppose that the molecules are not identifiable, so that all distributions are the same in which the same number of molecules is present in the same volume, then there is no change in the distribution with time. But this consideration is not relevant to our present purpose. When we say that the distribution of the molecules is dictated by chance we are thinking of the molecules as identifiable. The possiblilty of regarding certain large collections as identical although the elemetns of which they are composed are different gives rise to the study of statistics. There is a close connection between statistics and probability, but the use of statistics may be quite independent of the conceptions of chance which we are examining now."

Now, I AM examining the unisexual salamanders. Simply try to think that the tiger salamander could not climb up on a glacier while those salamanders that did that in the past ended up reproducing ABOVE rocks their ancestors could only look up to.

A round ringing rock my friend. If you are below it I hope you evolve.

Again, I have no idea what you're talking about. That leap from statistical mechanics to salamanders is, I hope you'll admit, somewhat disconcerting for someone not acquainted with your thought processes.

quote:Because cellular automata are about fungi not lichens which you or I could engineer in some future ecosystem and besides I DID THINK of something substative in Wolfram's classifications of automata but as his own company distanced himself from it I will only now write about that under the issue of Why Weyl never got biology just left. Wolfram's "rules" and thus any cellular automata could go either way but the salamanders will always be the last play in the Bills football game (see the geographic hatching change from n-s to e-w) in the last twenty years of herpetology if you are still missing some of it) no matter how many time Gibbs had the last word.

Sorry. I don't follow you at all. Stream-of-consciousness style does not make for clarity, you know.

I'm afraid you'll have to make yourself clearer, and actually READ what I write instead of using it as a Rohrschach for your own thoughts. I think this conversation is pointless; I can't understand what argument you're putting forward. You jump around, and don't seem to realize it's incomprehensible.

I don't know if you actually know what you're talking about, but if you do you should work on being able to express it. I doubt ANYONE can follow those ramblings. I don't mean to be harsh, but please understand that's no way to put forth an argument. It's like talking to an ELIZA-like program.

Of course it is based on the simpler behavior of the component parts. That's pretty much my understanding of what emergent means.

I, BSM, Said;

I have always been confused over the notion of "emergence" ( I heard it used in the classroom at Cornell but it did not seem to me to signify anything real) because I have never seen in that literature an exhaustive discussion of (when or if the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts) vs (the notions where the whole is NEVER greater than a sum (no matter which) of the parts). It is clear to mathmaticians of set theory that *transitively* the w, infinite (next after all finites), IS LARGER than the sum of all finite numbers but translating this into geometry seems to have been the reason it was not applied to thoughts about emergence. Instead, I tend to think that algebra is here and emergence doesn't really exist, even though the cognitions you and others had associated with it in this thread did and does.

&YOU Carton said:

quote:I don't understand why you would view emergence as used here as the cardinality of a set. It is more a physical concept than a formal abstract one

etc.

.

There can be NO confusions here. I am not going to lose any more sleep over this. It was not a "stream". THAT% was consciousness expressing (itself) etc.

Where is "here"? Complexity is not a place. EvC is not a position. I could have answered you with a one-liner about why I, BSM, would or would not etc but I tried. One has to have the energy divided. I do not know if the reason I havent done this division is because I have not used Cantorian inherences or if it is specific to Helmhotlz's inability to comprehend Faraday. I dont think that it would be impossible to do stat mech on the electrons if that was answered. Your point was about emergence which is OVERDETERMINED in biology not about the correlation of two distributions. If I was mistaken seehttp://listserv.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0102&L=TAXACOM&P=R5038&D=0and tell me if you are interested in discussing virials in any sense of statistical mechanics as I have, but I dont think I posted much on it, thought about Crookes tubes and melanin distribution in terms of ISOTHERMALS (but as such are in the domain of macrothermodynamics) when it comes to organismal patterns but since I read about phenomeonological macrothermodyanics I am able to THINK in a less descriptive mode and more physical median. You may be "talking" to ELIZA lies but I am not.

The leap is not disconcerting if you insist on ants. Simlpy give me some DATA on ants or Gould'sbatsonian IDants etc and relate it to Monod's Chance and Necessity and the whole issue of any kind of accessible or not cardinal "goes away". I am not afraid to TAKE this step but I hate to go alone. If you cant discuss salamanders as per the below than I cant discuss ants if you dont tell me just off if it is the nervous system silly or just stupidty that prevented(s?) from communicating??

One needs the chemicals. I was going to talk on frogs but just when I was about to you asked about consciousness and emergence. Oh well- we have to life with life in internet time I guess.

Show me what you think the wholes and what the parts are in this salamander and sex information. and we will be able to specify if it was algebra or geometry that got between us.

USE Gould:SOET(a common abreviation for his last large volume on theconceptual restructuring of evolutionary theory)p648:"Second, some well-documented patterns in nature seem hard to explain without a strong component of interdemic selection. Female-biased sex ratios, as discussed by Wilson and Sober (1994, pp. 640-641), provide the classic example because two adjacent levels make opposite and easily tested predictions: conventional organismic selection should favor a 1:1 ratio by Fisher's famous argument (1930); while interdemic selection should promote strongly female-biased ratios to enhance the productivity of groups. Williams (1966) accepted this framework, which he proposed as a kind of acid test for the existence of group selection. He allowed the female-biased ratios would point to group selection, but denied that any had, in fact, been documented, thus validating empirically the theoretical arguments he had developed for the impotence of group selection. Williams concluded (1966, p 151):"Close conformity with the theory is certainly the rule, and there is no convincing evidence that sex ratios every behave as a biotic adaptation." But empirical examples of female-biased ratios were soon discovered a plenty..."TO PARSE"Male A jeffersonianum can chemically discriminate between female conspecifics and female JJL (Dawley and Dawley 1986) and are more likley to court and produce relatively large numbers of spermatophores when experimentally paired with conspecifics than with JJL(Uzzell and Goldblatt 1967). This finding suggests that female JJL sometimes use excess spermatophores that are deposited as males of other Ambystoma species mate with conspecifics. Female JJL lay about 140-200 eggs, and the mode of egg deposition and egg mass size resemble those of A.jeffersonianum (Uzzell 1964a)." Page 125 In Salamanders of the United States and Canada by James Petranka 1998.

It is not emergence but simply a broad knowledge from where in I speak with or without Euclid. I like Pascal though. You see::: this whole issue that I DID NOT FIND at Cornell, IS between the names Washington-Jefferson without Clinton. Oh well, merged again! I had required for MY OWN discussion as READ on EVC that the points be dual. You were free to NOT write so. So it made it difficult and continues to do so for me to relate EXACTLY what I wrote to what you did. You see??? now? Are you sure we are talking at about emergence of addition and NOT multiplication??????? How can you be so certain that people dont just accept the notion in an overdetermined e-m(ergant) state because they view probabilistic multipliers as wrongly concieved additions+? Can you exclude NED's Quote from this possiblity from which I HAD responded. I did not. Is is not that the girl salamanders USE the sperm because there are MORE females than because sperm donation is in some situations in excess? Stop me before I leap the step. A discussion of Virials and your notions in Kinetic theory of gasses might adapt EVC's discussion WITHOUT the countable infinite but I can not be certain without some more information from you. I still would NOT call this "emergent" but merely 'growing'. I pray you dont read this as candy.

quote:1) What is the maximum number of lines needed to exactly bound the convex cover of any given set of a1..an points? Clearly, n (the greatest convex polygon you can make with n points). This problem does seem to be a sum of its parts; add a point, you can make an n+1-sided polygon at most.

but I can not be certain given the above mentioned isothermal (on an edge of a flow I margnialized in my own copy of the Dover edition on the Kinetic Theory of Gases) whether SPECIFICALLY it is a convex or a concave polygon that would be integral to our conversation. For if inherences were required in the regulatory extension of process rates finished and summed then I dont see how Gould's stepped time speciations could NOT be used to outline the ecology OR behavior involved in any distribution contained. Now if I was certain that this was behavior or ecology or I KNEW that point sets DID NOT apply then I could continue to agree with you but as I only was motivated to think on this from electron distributions I can not be sure when it came to any action at a distance or virial or replusionsandatractions(any ion) that we had NOT got better than Bateson's question to Hardy as to PATTERN that this did relate. You were correct about the pattern. The issue is if there is NOT MORE spatial heterogenity than current temporal understanding but my sense it self is not determined on this. I could just accept a math probablisitc materialist attitude and try to reason thus but I dont have that process completed as yet. I would have had to relate across about 100 pages of Gouldtext from Bateson to Weismann and as I said this WOULD relate to RNA.

Take the latest out of Cornell for instance. The Cornell Chronicle reported that biologists had found disease might be treated epigentically (September 9, 2004) with the title "Weill CU research shows how activity of a gene is repressed 'epigentically'"but in the patter you correctly identified this could simply be preformed supramolecularly (ie self-assemblied). Now imagine $all$ these mistakes in the 100 pages of Gould and I see easily how hard it is to read biological research in English. It is maddening indeed. I had had the thought that was approved in this research when visiting colleges as a high school student and got in at a Harvard lecture by Gilbert and so I, BSM, find that what I thought decades ago was a good one but in the mean time because of anti-creationist sentiments NOT because I thought correctly I was PREVENTED from using this thought in a carrer. That is why I post on EVC to bring to people's attentions the errors in many researches so that what happened to me in US wont happen again.

I was trying to find out the "behavior" but if one assumes Wolfram's "notion" of the word then you need not heed my posting in this thread. I simply thought so because I doubt the RATIO can be bettered without the countably infinite and this might be shown by SEM data from snake scales as to thermoregulation and light refraction between SPECIES of snakes. I dont know. There are just not any people here this interested in following up my ideas, so instead you see every one getting up on whether or not Meyer was ethical or not. Again I can not avoid the thought that this IS NOT due to creation vs evolution as both sides have had a say on EVC but instead due to sequesterd and privledged research programs that prevent common communication of just what was so hard for you to conclude about a sum of material subcomponents. Obviously if a measure were afforded by some agency then it would not be necessary to use a test by proportion. What is very cutting edge is that macrotheromdyanmic inequalities provide the discontinuity within the body that Bateson might have thought but Gould simply continuously rather cited anti-creationist sentiments about where the analogy to US poltics is not remiss as the proportionate stratifed poll is a non-biological exemplar of the same FORM of the data. It seems that the only reason for this state was the insistance that process rates of materials IS ALL that is NEW in the research. Clearly US biologists NEED to use Continental Approaches if they are have their schools locally do better.

Further more I have already indicated in good position on EVC the dubious use of the word BLOCK which reappears here inlitt at a crucial point.http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=53661&pageindex=2#page"This directly contradicts the traditional assumption that the allochthonous genomes of the unisexuals be inherited en bloc during hybridogenetic meiosis"The contradiction is in the words not in your reasoning. Notice "it contradicts", AN ASSUMPTION, not a fact and this gets science, with all the money, still no where...What the research paid for was avoiding use of the simple word bloc or block for allochthonous"". I hope this helps. Since it is the TEMPORAL difference the words in the work did not provide access to the data without doing some kind of interpretation. Science should be more transparent. I dont think creationism is to blame for this even if you failed to parse the same as I did. I, in my mind maintain this difference (mathematically) if I notice different mathematicians use of the words "cardinal" and "ordinal" but this is wholy subjective unless the countably infinte DID apply to the ecology of this duration no matter the behavior. I might be paid to find this out but the problem lies not with me but with others realizing that there is a solution. As for how this format might relate to only a denumerable sum equally for ants and salamanders, that, at least, I had not given thought to - at all.

It seems a few questions have come up in the present debates concerning the life-non life issue and since this was an interesting thread at one point I thought perhaps it could be discussed again in order to prevent off topic drift in other threads.

I would sure enjoy letting some of the newer members to make a comment and see if we can get any further understanding in this subject.

Here is the opening post.

sidelined writes:

I hold that there is no actual border between the two and that it is a matter of bias on the part of we conscious humans. If we assume that life is a continual progression in complexity then everything that any organism does is a result of chemical elements increasing in capability and,under the influence of natural forces,changing the level of interaction into novel forms that again increase the range of capabilities into complexity.Whatever atoms can do relays into what we can do.The border would appear to be an illusion and this would explain the difficulty that occurs in trying to pin it down. We have a good working knowledge of the forces and the atom itself and I believe that over the next decade there should be sufficient understanding of biology to show the connections within the complexity.

Edited by sidelined, : No reason given.

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

The only border that exists is the one you believe exists, LOL. I am inclined to say that there exists no real "collective border" between the two. The word "life" is an absract concept for the most part, especially in the context of which your question is posed. You could analyze it from the perspective of classifying independent objects or you could analyze it from the perspective of process or function, cause-effect. Everything is connected though - "life" is made from the same matter that "non-life" is made of and matter interacts with matter. Although the soil isn't "life", it is required in order for plant life to exist. We need air to breathe - the air is just as much a part of us as our lungs.

Trying to define life as some specific chemical makeup or behaviour can be done and it would clear the fog to reveal the border you seek. But to come up with a definition of life that everyone agrees upon isn't likely to happen - THAT is what makes the border between the two so obscure.

It isn't that a border can't exist clear as day though - the border appears for you wherever you define it to be. Those that agree with you will see it just the same.

I'm not privvy to the wealth of knowledge many members here have when it comes to the biology involved - I do however understand process. As an engineer I tend to view subjects like this in much the same way as I would analyze a machine or a system of machines. "What does it do, what is it made of, what makes it tick." The way I see it is there exists a common chemical "denominator" that living things are structured by. An internal combustion piston engine is an internal combustion piston engine whether it has 1 cylinder, 2, 4,6,8 whatever - it comes in different flavors but they are all still internal combustion piston engines. A steam engine is a sort of piston engine but it does not operate on internal combustion, so we call that a piston-steam engine. If one engineer says to me, "We are going to build an "X" machine and use an engine to power it." I would simply ask the question, "what kind of engine are you thinking of?" to gain clarification of the details. There are clear differences between these types of engines but there are also many similarities as well - but we call them "engines" as a broad categorization of many types of devices which can produce mechanical work. And engines wouldn't qualify as life. :)

"Life" is no different - it has many different forms and variations in its appearance, size, etc, but all life has also both clearly distinguishable material composition as well as basic function. i.e. it all has the DNA molecule at the heart of its physical construct and life all has an affinity towards sustaining its existence. There's the "what's it do, what's it made of, and what makes it tick."

If I were to point to any random object in the room and ask you if it were life or non-life, I am sure we would both agree on the answer. But when you start breaking an object in question down into its constituents further and further, you eventually will get to a point where you are no longer even asking the question "is it life or not". You then begin the struggle of trying to define its every element and non-element

Life really isn't a "thing" anyhow - it is more of a process - a cause-effect property of matter - an abstract concept. Perhaps instead of looking at things through a microscope, a telescope may just do the trick. Standing on the surface of the moon, looking back at the planet, one could probably have the perspective to just realize "THAT is life". Could you imagine the feeling that sight would create?

I hold that there is no actual border between the two and that it is a matter of bias on the part of we conscious humans. If we assume that life is a continual progression in complexity then everything that any organism does is a result of chemical elements increasing in capability and,under the influence of natural forces,changing the level of interaction into novel forms that again increase the range of capabilities into complexity.Whatever atoms can do relays into what we can do.The border would appear to be an illusion and this would explain the difficulty that occurs in trying to pin it down. We have a good working knowledge of the forces and the atom itself and I believe that over the next decade there should be sufficient understanding of biology to show the connections within the complexity.

There is a distinct border between chemicals and living organisms. That border has been recognized since the beginning of human beings and it is highly recognized today. This threshold boundary is crossed every day all around the world. That boundary is called DEATH.

If you think this is illusionary, then why will you eventually die? All organisms die. All the chemicals are there. If you want to talk about a "primordial soup" of organic chemicals, then how about the "soup" of chemicals still present when an organism dies. All the proteins are present for life. All the amino acids are present for life. All the catalysts are present for life. All the DNA and RNA is present for life. All the cell walls are present for life. What better organic soup could you want other than a dead organism.

It is just foolishness IMO to suggest that there is no boundary. It is obvious to most people. I guess you have to be an educated scientific abiogenesist to not see and understand the boundary. Only religious ideas would lead to the conclusion from the evidence that there is no distint boundary.

A quick google scholar search on the subject of "cell death" shows 2,500,000 entries. I think science even recognizes this boundary.

I hold that there is no actual border between the two and that it is a matter of bias on the part of we conscious humans. If we assume that life is a continual progression in complexity then everything that any organism does is a result of chemical elements increasing in capability and,under the influence of natural forces,changing the level of interaction into novel forms that again increase the range of capabilities into complexity.Whatever atoms can do relays into what we can do.The border would appear to be an illusion and this would explain the difficulty that occurs in trying to pin it down. We have a good working knowledge of the forces and the atom itself and I believe that over the next decade there should be sufficient understanding of biology to show the connections within the complexity.

There is a distinct border between chemicals and living organisms. That border has been recognized since the beginning of human beings and it is highly recognized today. This threshold boundary is crossed every day all around the world. That boundary is called DEATH.

If you think this is illusionary, then why will you eventually die? All organisms die. All the chemicals are there. If you want to talk about a "primordial soup" of organic chemicals, then how about the "soup" of chemicals still present when an organism dies. All the proteins are present for life. All the amino acids are present for life. All the catalysts are present for life. All the DNA and RNA is present for life. All the cell walls are present for life. What better organic soup could you want other than a dead organism.

It is just foolishness IMO to suggest that there is no boundary. It is obvious to most people. I guess you have to be an educated scientific abiogenesist to not see and understand the boundary. Only religious ideas would lead to the conclusion from the evidence that there is no distint boundary.

A quick google scholar search on the subject of "cell death" shows 2,500,000 entries. I think science even recognizes this boundary.